AM-199. WHAT IS THE SELF? (6)

Two questions were asked in the previous presentation about how Alice Bailey presented the concept of the soul and how her presentations were often not defined and if they were, they contradicted other representations she made. The first two questions asked about these representations revolved around how the soul was presented within the context of the 2nd triad. Was she talking about the causal envelope (47), the unity envelope (46) or even the lower spiritual envelope (45)? We will now look at how the higher self, be it the soul or the ego, is differentiated from the “illusory self” or the persona and how this equates to what Hylozoics has to say on the matter. In this context, Bailey refers to the soul as a superhuman component, apart from the persona. The way these two aspects of identity are referenced, the reader comes away with no doubt that they are separate entities. When the higher entity is referred to as a solar deva, then yes indeed we are talking about two monads and this is what has been the topic for many presentations the Adventures of the Monad. But solar angels aside, students have been led in a direction to consider that two competing active components are each part of themselves.

It has been mentioned that Bailey was heavily influenced by Theosophical ideas, which were themselves heavily influenced by exoteric Indian pantheism, especially, Shankara’s advaita. According to this teaching, Humanity’s true self is a divine being, known as atman, who is at home in a higher world, whereas the self-conscious human experiences and identifies themselves with their self, has only a shadowy, unreal, and illusory existence. The implication is that the entire human existence, if not the whole of evolution, is absurd. Why must we live as shadows and unreal illusory beings in an imperfect state, when our true self already lives in a divine state or even has been there always? This cannot possibly be genuine and original esoteric teaching. This concept is clearly at odds with what Hylozoics teaches us.

Laurency states clearly that “the fundamental divergence of Pythagoras’ hylozoics and Shankara’s pantheism is that Advaita assumes that consciousness can exist without a material basis, while according to hylozoics consciousness cannot have a separate existence independent of matter, but is always and necessarily bound up with matter.” “According to pantheism, life must be without a rational purpose. The universal soul separates from itself the individual soul, which after meaningless wandering about, described as metempsychosis, through the four natural kingdoms, finally succeeds in attaining nirvana, and is annihilated by being reabsorbed into an eternally immutable universal soul that works blindly and automatically without a purpose. It is understandable that self-consciousness, as having no firm point for its own existence, must be assumed to merge with the primordial soul once it is freed from matter.

Hylozoics, on the other hand, proposes a doctrine of consistent evolution, where the monad possesses no higher self-consciousness other than what it has managed to acquire and activate through its own efforts. This is known as the Law of Self-Activation. It starts from the physical world (49) and works its way back to Plane-1. Hylozoics is clear that there can not, simultaneously, be two separate levels of self-consciousness attributable to a monad. If we refer to a soul, then that soul must be another monad, not the human monad. Did the 45-self Master DK know about this? Of course, he did. The problem was Bailey did not. Or was not able to adapt the terminology that she inherited from earlier theosophical doctrines. 

Yet it is very clear from the writings penned by Alice Bailey in, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire in particular, that the higher self, Ego, the soul or solar Angel, to which there are numerous references, is neither the human monad nor any kind of mere passive human consciousness. It is another monad, another individual, who is self-conscious and self-active in superhuman worlds, independent of the human monad who is self-conscious and self-active in its own worlds. But these beings nevertheless have a very close connection with Humanity. As she says, “for these solar Angels concern their own essential nature, and are also the creative power by which they work.” Hylozoics informs us that these solar angels’ work consists, among other things, of building the causal envelope in 47:1 matter and in so doing, connecting Humanity’s first and second triads. They derive their origin from World 46 and have at least 46:1 consciousness.

In Pythagorean terminology, the solar Angel is called Augoeides. This Greek word means the “shining one”. The work of the Augoeides with Humanity began when humans causalised. This occurs during the transition of the monads from the Animal to the Human Kingdom. The solar devas’ role is to be the agents of the Law of Destiny where individuals and groups are concerned and in inspiring Humanity from causal levels. This is only possible from Stage 3, the level of Culture. Solar devas never lead us in the manifest way that the so-called “spiritual” guides of the Emotional World do.

When you read the works of someone like Bailey, if you can approach it armed with the knowledge that Hylozoics affords you, then there is much to be gained in her writing, but still, the reader needs to be wary. She says, “The solar angel hitherto contacted has withdrawn himself, and the form through which he functioned, which we know to be the causal body, has gone, and nought is left but love-wisdom.” Love-wisdom is the 46-self. Also left is “that dynamic will which has the prime characteristic of Spirit”. That “dynamic self” is a 45-self. “The lower self has served the purposes of the Ego, and has been discarded; the Ego likewise has served the purposes of the Monad and is no longer required, and the initiate stands free of both, fully liberated and able to contact the Monad, as earlier he learned to contact the Ego.” It is very important to realise that Bailey’s Monad is not the Pythagorean monad, the self-atom, but the third triad and the deva that watches over this triad, known as a Protogonos.

Now we are ready to answer Question (2). When in the Bailey literature, distinction is made between Humanity’s “higher self”, the “Ego” or the “soul” and “lower self”, or the “personality”, the “personality” refers to our physical, emotional, and mental self-consciousness. This implies that there is self-consciousness on two quite separate levels simultaneously. This must be understood as referring to two separate individuals or monads: The solar deva as a monad and the human being as a monad. In contrast, whenever there is mention of self-consciousness in the 1st triad and the 2nd triad on different occasions, this can also be understood as meaning that the self-consciousness of the human monad shifts between the two, but it is by no means certain, and to decide in each particular case what is the intended meaning may prove difficult. No wonder students of esoterics have been so confused as to what exactly the “self” is.

So to conclude this series of presentations, the Blue Books inadequately specify what the soul or ego is. There is no mention either of the fundamental role of the monad in the Pythagorean sense. When the monad is mentioned, it is in the context of the 3rd triad, which has been roundly discredited already. There is also the minor problem that the “soul”, as the solar deva and the “higher self” of the personality, has not been clearly defined.

Every thinking human being is aware that they are a self, but when reading the theosophical and Bailey literature, they are informed that this is not their true self, but the “lower self”, and that their true self is the “higher self”. This is inaccurate on at least three points since it implies (1) that observable human experience is denied, (2) that two or three self-conscious beings in Humanity are posited, and (3) that the continuity and permanence of the self are denied when equating the self with perishable envelopes for the monad, such as the 2nd or 3rd triad. 

Pythagorean hylozoics resolves these difficulties by teaching that the sole content of the cosmos is imperishable primordial atoms, or monads, and their compositions. Monads that have acquired self-consciousness are called selves. Monads that have not yet acquired self-consciousness make up composite atoms of lower and higher kinds, and these composite atoms, in their turn, make up envelopes for self-conscious monads. The human self is a self-conscious monad. Humanity’s multiple bodies are envelopes for the monad, but so are his triads. These are beings which Bailey calls the “quaternary” or the “personality”, in the 1st triad. It is called the “soul”, “Ego” or “Triad”, in the case of the 2nd triad, and the “Monad”, in the 3rd triad. Any one of these envelopes is a self to the monad whenever the monad identifies itself with its consciousness; for example, the human monad is an emotional self when identifying itself with the consciousness of its emotional envelope, and a mental self when identifying itself with the consciousness of its mental envelope. However, this identification of the monad with its envelopes results from the monad’s ignorance of itself. Humanity, for instance, is sometimes aware that it is self-conscious, but even then it is ignorant of the fact that this self-consciousness is the monad’s consciousness. But upon learning that they are an imperishable monad, they should not, when self-conscious, say to themselves, “My monad is self-conscious now”, but “I, the monad, am self-conscious now”. I am that I am!

There are at least seven clearly distinguishable, different uses or meanings of the term “soul” in the Bailey literature, namely (1) consciousness in general and as a universal phenomenon; (2) the causal envelope and its (at lower human stages) passive consciousness; (3) the second triad and its passive consciousness (passive before the human monad has become a second self); (4) the human monad in general (then it is often called the “human soul”); (5) the human monad after it acquires self-consciousness in the causal envelope (being then a causal self); (6) the superhuman monad after its acquisition of self-consciousness in the 46-envelope, being then a 46-self; and (7) The solar deva, often called the “soul on its own plane”. The term “Ego” is used interchangeably with “soul” in all the senses just cited above, except in the first example (1), the general and universal consciousness. 

The failure to give out the teaching on the monad in its true, original Pythagorean sense, while retaining the term monad and, therefore, using it erroneously has, as Laurency says, “occasioned an irremediable confusion of ideas”.

All of the confusion and misuse of terms cited in these presentations are part and parcel of the “heritage of Blavatsky”. Blavatsky was unconcerned with terminology to the point of carelessness. In her defence, she was also seriously limited by the constraints imposed upon her by her teachers and informants, who did not wish too much of the esoteric knowledge to be revealed at the time, and so rather preferred vagueness, ambiguity, and confusion, regarding them as protective coverings as it were.

However, even after considerably more knowledge was permitted for publication through 45-self D.K., the original vagueness, ambiguity, and confusion were not resolved. Bailey was about as little interested in terminology as Blavatsky, and D.K. did not force the issue. Besides, why should he have done so? It is implied by the iron-hard law of self-realisation that whatever can be done by human beings must be done by us, and not by the Hierarchy. We are just lucky that Henry Laurency made the effort to sort this mess out and then shared his findings with us. I would drink a toast to him if I consumed alcohol.

See you in the next series of presentations on Chains, Rounds and Globes.